While on hold for a Customer Service Rep with my local cable company, I entertained myself by flipping on the Food Channel. Joy of joys, I tuned in just in time to Sandra Lee demonstrate how to chiffonade fresh basil---ONE LEAF AT A TIME!

All of you who make a neat stack and roll them up like a cigar? Stop it, that's all wrong.

My wine shopping and I have never had a problem. Just a perpetual race between the bankruptcy court and Hell.--Rogov

Jenise wrote: I tuned in just in time to Sandra Lee demonstrate how to chiffonade fresh basil---ONE LEAF AT A TIME!

All of you who make a neat stack and roll them up like a cigar? Stop it, that's all wrong.

I thought it was wrong to cut basil at all. Doesn't it have to be torn by hand to preserve the true basil flavour - as when cutting with a knife (or whatever) don't you lose some of those essential oils?

Jenise wrote: I tuned in just in time to Sandra Lee demonstrate how to chiffonade fresh basil---ONE LEAF AT A TIME!

All of you who make a neat stack and roll them up like a cigar? Stop it, that's all wrong.

I thought it was wrong to cut basil at all. Doesn't it have to be torn by hand to preserve the true basil flavour - as when cutting with a knife (or whatever) don't you lose some of those essential oils?

Where would the oils go? Oz? I think all this no-cutting stuff (salad greens etc) comes from an era when we all worked with carbon steel knives - which reacted with many foodstuffs. Now that we have the high carbon content stainless knives there is no problem that I see. If you can cut.

ChefCarey wrote:Where would the oils go? Oz? I think all this no-cutting stuff (salad greens etc) comes from an era when we all worked with carbon steel knives - which reacted with many foodstuffs. Now that we have the high carbon content stainless knives there is no problem that I see. If you can cut.

I think the idea is that cutting with a knife slices right through the cells of the plant, whereas tearing will leave more of them intact, thus resulting in fewer ruptured cells and less loss of essential oils (which evaporate redily), less exposure of cell contents to atmospheric oxygen, etc.

I have my doubts concerning that theory. I like yours (reactive vs. stainless knives) better.

Regarding slicing basil leaves individually vs. stacking them, it sounds like a wonderful way to waste a lot of time without any real benefit to the final dish. In fact, since it's bound to take about 10 times longer to cut up the basil that way, it is actually detrimental, since it means those first leaves sit around, losing their essential oils the whole time, for a lot longer.